Not sure why anyone would even consider voting for Obama.

Voting for Nader. Vote your conscious. Curiously, a posting on the VOA website hit the nail on the head as to the structural reasons why national politics has been reduced to Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dee. A parilmentary system would open the political debate, the policy debates, though not a sufficient cause.

http://www.voanews.com/english/NewsAnalysis/2008-06-30-voa22.cfm

Food for thought.

Final comment.

Another comment has disappeared - the one from Brian to which I responded somewhere below. 

It would be foolish for me to comment anymore since the comment to which I respond can disappear or get changed. 

Since I can\'t comment, I won\'t read comments, since comments often contain criticisms and/or errors I\'ll feel compelled (rightly or wrongly...I tend to cling neurotically to Marx\'s belief that "to leave error uncorrected is to encourage intellectual immorality") to  respond.  I will still no doubt occasionaly put some things up on the blog but people should not be offended if I don\'t respond to a blog comment; I won\'t have seen it. . 

Anyone who needs a response from me will have to write to me privately. 

Since comments are disappearing also from the bottom of main page articles (for what it;s worth I\'ve never supported people being able to comment on articles on the top page) , I will disregard comments sections altogether from this point on.  

Nobody should address me or expect a response from me in a comments section from this point on; if you need a response you\'ll have to write privately.

You are on to something there Minot.

And now my comment responding to Davidson\'s first comment has come down - not by my hand.

Turns out I saved both of the now deleted comments because I e-mailed them to a comrade.

 Response to a Slanderous Obamanist

By Paul Street 

July 4, 2008

My trip to Obamanist Hell and back with Carl Davidson continues. And now there is the issue of his Holocaust slander, to which I turn at the end.

 Carl,

So anything short of arch-plutocratic messianic militarist McCain will keep you on board and away from voting third party or not at all. 

Oh-kay.

Fine, but (a) you  continue to be over-obsessed with (and are becoming borderline slanderous about) the Holocaust denial comment (more on this below); (b) I did not say Obama was morally or ideologically worse than the fascist David Duke : I said Obama has actually voted funds for the invasion of Iraq, which has imposed a Holocaust on Iraq;  (c) Obama does mess with left minds a great deal (you are a perfect example and are being exposed as a fool by Obama) and while he would never call himself a socialist (of course) he does falsely claim to be a "progressive" and to be antiwar; (d) you should consider that much of Obama\'s pronounced elite sponsorship reflects the carefully vetted sense that he will help re-legitimize the very military U.S. Empire Project you abhor --- something he quite loudly and explicitly promises to do in his conservative  2006 book (which goes to great lengths to delete past U.S. imperial crimes), his  nauseating Foreign Affairs essay (summer 2007) and his various Reagan- and JFK-like foreign policy addresses to the Council of Foreign Relations, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Wilson Center and in comments praising George Bush I\'s horrid imperial butchery in 1990-91; (e) you mention Iraq (where\'s he\'s actually very bad and quite deceptive - numerous Obama campaign materials here in Iowa told voters they could "join the movement to end the war" by caucusing for him...a completely  absurd claim) always but you leave out his terrible imperial positions on Israel/Palestine, Columbia, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iran, American foreign policy history, etc. and the world as a whole; (f) you naturally can\'t expect all progressive voters to go as far as you in accommodating his center and right corporate and imperial stances (and vapid non-stances) on a plethora of issues and matters (Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, nuclear power, campaign finance, corporate power, health care, civil liberties, trade, welfare "reform," class injustice and on and on and on and on...)...perhaps you have a super-normal capacity to accommodate bullshit in pursuit of "realistic" and "pragmatic"  objectives; (g) you should disconnect from Obama and the election somewhat and think or at least write more about the broader role and relevance of the quadrennial presidential spectacles in the crippling of democracy and indeed in the making of corporate-managed totalitarianism (please read Sheldon Wolin\'s book Democracy Incorporated after the election); (h) you should stop calling these sorts of reflections "subjectivism;" (i) you should consider the possibility that granting your vote and electoral labor power in advance to Obama (\'08) or Kerry (\'04) or Gore (\'00) or Clinton (1996,1992) or Dukakis (1988) etc. --- with no conditions other than that they aren\'t McCain or Bush II or Dole or Bush I etc. ----  may be part of the problem with these candidates; (j) you should re-define and expand or maybe just clarify your sense of "the prize" ( read Charles Derber\'s book Hidden Power on the dangers of the "Election Trap"?)  (k) you should take a close look at what the Conrgressional vote monitors mean when they designate "liberal" voting records (it may well be less than what you think); (l) you should recall that Obama has distanced himself from this voting record and indeed from the term liberal...

Now to your Holocaust slander - a nice bit of Chicago-style smearing. You are perhaps hung up on the Holocaust denial thing because you have bought into the narrow definition of the one and true Holocaust being the six million Jews under the Nazis. There was a Native American Holocaust, a black American Holocaust,...other examples.  Some of us honestly think the U.S. is imposing a Holocaust on Iraq : 1. 2 million dead, millions more injured and displaced. Further devastation of a society Superpower has been assaulting for a long time.

  "Antiwar" Obama (who will adjust his already weak start-to-remove-combat brigades in 16-month pledge in accord with the advice of commanders "on the ground") denies all this.  In fact, he says we\'ve got to stop spending so much money "putting Iraq back together."  

 Yes: "putting Iraq back together" How sickening is that, Carl?  If you can shake that sort of commentary off easily (there\'s more...much more) and just carry on for the Empire-legitimizer Barack and "the prize" of electing him (stopping McCain). ....well good for "objectivist" you.   

 By the way, just half the U.S. force structure in Iraq is combat brigades and Obama will not sign on to banning Blackwater and the rest of the corporate private security contractors from Iraq (he can\'t back Jan Schakowsky\'s bill on that).  

 Obama ridiculously claims that Bush-Cheney invaded with noble and democratic intentions ("to create a Jeffersonian democracy")  and refuses to acknowledge (just like the liberal hawks of the late 1960s on Vietnam ) the criminal and imperial and racist nature of the one sided colonial "war."   That refusal is part of why he won\'t or can\'t meaningfully oppose the "war" (imperial occupation).  

 So, really...cut the slanderous crap on the Holocaust.  You know very well I do not say that he denies the Jewish/Nazi Holocaust. You know I could give a lot of the details on how terribly close he is to Israel and the Israel lobby, after all.  You and many millions of other Americans should get it through your skull that we are doing a Holocaust in Iraq (a policy your hero has funded and rationalized and will sustain) and that Obama (hardly alone) denies this. And you know that I said all the top Democrats - including the one for whom I volunteered in the fall of 2007 --- had signed on to Empire\'s official denial of the Holocaust we are imposing on Iraq .

Matt - Thank you. The quadrennial intra-leftist bloodletting about how to best respond to the limited, narrow-spectrum choices offered by the "elite"-run system of "managed democracy" (Sheldon Wolin) --- a long slow "corporate coup" (as Claudia says) of sorts (though it has real roots and precedents in the pre-corporate area) ---  is painful and exhausting. IRV is  a good thing to advocate along with a lot more.  If you look at the end of my recent ZNet article "News Flash: Obama Lies Too" (please link it off my Z Space or Google it up...too burned out to go chase down the URL), you\'ll see that I give a long list of election and other reforms that might make this election madness a little less maddening. 

I am relatively new to ZNet, but I just want to say 2 quick things and hopefully avoid anything particularly antagonistic.

1. Paul, I really appreciate all your writing on Obama. It helps me avoid getting too sucked in by the "Obamania" ridiculousness, which I\'m afraid my mind wouldn\'t be disciplined enough to avoid otherwise. Your articles help me stay clearer-minded.

2. The questions you pose at the end of your article are valid and (for me, at least) thought-provoking. And the first thought that comes to mind is, "I really need to start pushing for instant-runoff voting around here." ("Here" meaning my home state, not ZNet.) It may be too late for 2008, but I don\'t want to have to face these questions again in 2012, and I think that IRV takes a lot of the bite out of them. You\'d still have to decide where to invest your time/money, but there wouldn\'t be nearly the agony of deciding how to vote!

- Matt

Paul, one hardly know where to go with this.

Street: You hardly know.  That does not mean "one" does not inherently know...a more intellectually skilled person might know but perhaps you don\'t.

I understand, and so does anyone who can read our back-and-forth, that the \'holocaust\' you were talking about was Iraq, not Germany. That doesn\'t make your assertion that Obama was a \'holocaust denier\' and worse than David Duke, who is the fascist you assert he is, smell any prettier because Obama had a vote on the funding of the war and Duke didn\'t.

Street: I give up; you can\'t process the information...nothing more to say.

Your language here is rotten, and the more you defend it, the worse it gets.

Street: This is bizarre and unspecific ... can\'t guess as to meaning or reference so will ignore.

By that logic, most of the Congress are also \'holocaust deniers,\' including, as you point out, the one you campaigned for in Iowa.

Street: Absolutely.  You understood something I said.

But I seriously doubt if you used that language against Edwards in the middle of that campaign to disabuse potential voters and activists of any illusions they might have.

Street: I was  quite rough on him at various points in the primary campaign....won\'t go dig all up all the relevant URLs.  Edward was a fraud but he ran his fraud to the left of Obama\'s fraud on class, race, the environment, and even Iraq. That\'s all you can hope for with these folks.

Nor do I think you\'ll go knocking on any doors in Congress, trying to win reps to cut off the funding, and introduce yourself by asserting that they are \'holocaust deniers worse than David Duke\'

Street: again...this is obsession

and they better get on board with you to get rid of the label. You have more sense than that, and you sit on your vitriol...

Street: Slander - or close to it. You are not reading me carefully or at all ..Obamanism is infecting yor ability to processs a writer\'s writing...the "vitriol" is point .03 compared to the empirical substance at 99.97 ...based on thorough  research. 

which is equally if not more due to them, since some of them have been there longer, and never opposed the war in the beginning. But why do you singularly unleash your vitriol on Obama in this way? And why pick a KKKer to do it,

Street: You are just obsessed with this and can\'t let go; it\'s bizarre. Nothing to say - pointless.  Would ignore completely except it is taking on an aspect of slander.

when, as far as I know, you didn\'t do this with Hillary or Edwards? Comparing them unfavorably to David Duke, that is? What button does Obama press in you, that the others don\'t, that unleashes this?

Street: you are wrong...you haven\'t read me...I have written quite critically for years on the Democrats as a whole - the top ones.  Wiith Obama the volume of critique is not mysterious and is simply because I correctly picked him to be the one the powers that be would install as the presidential nominee some time ago; the one who was going to ascend to the WH in fact. So obviously the most relevant target - the next president in all likelihood. And because a key part of the phenomenon is the bamboozing of progressives...the main audience at Z.  There\'s more - i wrote a whole essay about why the relative focus on Obama; you didn\'t read it so you are ignorant of my views on this; you can\'t expect me to have to re-write everything for you in the comments section on a blog. There were few progressive illusions about Hillary; such illusions are rampant about Obama.  Quite a few with Edwards too, but he was in fact considerably more progressive than Obama in primary campaign, especially on class and corporate power. The other thing is that Obama\'s taste for elaborate deception and long-winded justification of the status quo is really quite astonishing - not sure I\'ve ever seen anything like it at this stage.  It is both fascinating and nauseating to me, I admit...not unlike Reagan in that regard.

Seriously, you need to deal with this, and get rid of it, if you want to be taken seriously in wider circles than you\'re in now.

Street: Take yourself seriously in your circles and I\'ll take myself seriously in mine... There are not that many writers and activists left that I take seriously at this point --- many of  the ones I do (like say John Pilger) have a very strong critique of the Obaama phenomenon, of which you are a small part.

Anyone who knows me, or reads my work, understands that I\'m no star-stuck groupie for Obama. I know exactly what he is, along with all the problems. I\'ve spelled it out, dozens of times, in this forum and many, many others.

Street: Cool - good for you.

At \'Progressives for Obama\', we\'re publishing critiques of him, battling \'rightward drift\', or whatever you chose to call it, this very day, as we have from the begining. And I don\'t know how else to spell out to you that I\'m not a Democratic party reformer, never voted for Clinton or Dukakis or Mondale or Carter, and have worked to find ways to supplant it all my life--even as, like you, I\'ve picked a few candidates, mainly local, to support now and then.

Street: Awesome.

The best I can figure is that our differences are something like this: I think the main danger is McCain and the faction of imperialists around him, and the main task is to defeat him with the tools and forces history has given us and, to a degree, that we can shape ourselves. It requires the best progressive-center coalition, including a faction of imperialism, that we can assemble and keep together and keep vibrant. I think the progressive forces, and the left within them, develop best in these conditions. You think the main danger is the imperialist with the widest influence and resting on the greatest illusions in bourgeois democracy within the progressive movement itself, and your main task is primarily to nurture anti-imperialist consciousness by aiming your main blow at these \'social props\' of imperialism within our ranks.

Street: I did not embrace voting third party or sitting out the election: I dared to ask a question: where exactly in policy or political terms do progressive Obamanists draw a line and say "I can\'t take it anymore?" It\'s a sincere and specific  question and still I have no specific or detailed answers beyond you saying anything to the left of the rightist John McCain.  We have a nice kid (Brian) trying to lecture me on "tone" (does he also lecture Obama on the need to stop saying that we are spending much money "trying to put Iraq back together" and other such fine comments as that?) and more of your lecturing on ruling class fractions and ultra-leftism as if I\'ve never ready Trotsky on the CP\'s third line and the rise of German fascism.

Building the anti-imperialist movement in this way is strategically more important and far outweighs and tactical advantage or gain afforded by the outcome of this election and, most likely, any other election within this system. I don\'t mean to put words in you mouth or read your mind. If I\'m off base, I take it back. But it \'s the only way I can make any sense at all of what you\'re saying here

Street: You are looking for a party line in everything.  Maybe I\'m not with a party. I am the author of a book on the historical development and meaning of the Obama phenomenon.  You should order the book and read it. Seriously.  Read the book - especially the chapter on why Obama gets support (Chapter 5: \'Obama Nation: Sixteen Reasons\'), the chapter on the Obama phenomenon and the U.S. party and  elections system and political culture (Chapter 6) and the Afterword on what a true progressive White House would do (quite detailed and forward-looking)   Also each of the issue chapters (Chapter 1 on class and business power, Chapter 3 on race and Chapter 4 on foreign policy) are very careful to situate Obama within the longer history of the Democratic Party and its positions ...it does not single Obama out at all but rather places him in the deeper and broader context of the Democratic Paty and the historical devlopment of the business-ruled U.S. elections and party systems and political culture  It\'s actually a decent book for you to read, with some very strong endorsements by some very serious people.  How many books have you written? Do you take them (if any) seriously? This is a very serious book. Mr. Davidson, and not what you think it is. 

But if I\'m close, naturally, I don\'t agree with that line. It\'s fatally flawed with ulraleftism and has cost others dearly in the past. But that opposition has to do with the politics of it, and not you personally. The \'holocaust\' thing is another matter, and is just wacko, in my opinion. It doesn\'t do you or anyone else any good.

Street: You should tell the people of Iraq it is wacko to think that they have experienced a Holocaust and to think that people who claim we are engaged in a noble effort to repair their society are deniers of that Holocaust. 

Street: Obama is very likely to win.  With McCain defeated we will see your real colors; maybe you will function very well as a progressive activist in the Age of Obama - let\'s hope so; my book will be useful for progressives seeking to function that way and perhaps you can cease and desist from the charges of "ultra leftism" and "subjectivism" and so forth and understand the book as a tool for moving beyond Obamania and into repsonsible left activism under Obama- -a  tricky transition that will require among other things a fully informed and unflinching look at the full nature of the phenomenon, which I happen to have been in a rare position to observe and assess.  Read the book.

Brian: an essay titled "Letter to a Young Obama Fan" ia already in the works.  It\'s just a matter of timing and getting the message and yes tone right.  Maybe after the election (which I expect him to win) it will come out. 

The last chapter and the Afterword of my very carefully documented and extremely polite book (out before the election) are all very much and exactly about what a real and actual progressive agenda would look like. Please think about buying this book - it provides precisely what you are talking about.  

Some further comments:

1. I think this tone issue (which I hear constantly about in regard to Obama) gets somewhat dysfunctional in a bourgeois and Obamist sort of way...I am reminded of Obama\'s elitist lecture to Daily Kos writers/readers (in 2005?) and liberal activists on the "proper" way to express oneself toward august and noble U.S. Senators who approved Chief Justice Roberts - a person who was obviously going to assist the far-right agenda.  That sort of top-down know-it-all lecturing is a form of violence in itself.

2.  Better to experience some preemptive disillusionment in advance and to be ready for it than to get crushed by his imperial and coporate/Wall Street commitments (and values) once he gets in. Going apolitical and re-inverting to private life will absolutely be the wrong response  and it would be a little childish to blame me for going in that direction. Along with a large number of Left writers, I am helping educate people about what it is that is going to fail: corporate-imperial centrism, NOT the Left and NOT the people.  My harsh criticisms of Obama and people like Carl Davidson (who has stooped to slander to divert attention from his shameless servility to top Democrats) and Obama\'s failures must not and should not be seen as legitimate excuses for apolitical disengagement in accord with Sheldon Wolin\'s "inverted totalitarianism" thesis.  

3.  Please think about some left Buddhist (yes) reflections on the false choice of "hope" and \'\'fear."  Notice how they are all about the future, not the present? Do not foget the present moment.  HOPE is a corporate-funded Politcal Action  Committee (PAC).  It\'s also something of a pie-in-the-sky diversion from contemporary issues in the here and now (one reason  that it\'s often a big phrase for presidential candidates).  Who cares what Carl Davidson or I say (pleasant or unpleasant) about what Obama may or may not do in six months, next week, in a year, etc?  What are you and fellow activists doing to stop the Empire and create a more democratic  political culture and social justice right now and everyday beyond and beneath and across the big corporate-crafted quadrennial candidate-centered narrow-spetcrum winner-take-all  elite-managed presidential election extravaganzas and regardless of their fairly fixed outcomes ?  The whole "hope" and "fear" thing can paralyze - that\'s alot of why they are such favorite themes and words of politicians and why they are so big in elections, which are very top-down affairs under our current political structure.    

4.  Carl Davidson has taken to badly slandering me --- Chicago-/Daley-/Axelrod-style ---  on  on the Holocaust issue.  This is the sort of thing best handled in an alley behind a tavern and not before younger eyes.   Sorry.

Now I don\'t neccessarily qualify as a "progressive Obamist".  I have had Obama pegged for the centrist Democrat he is for a long time, and I am in much agreement with you.  And I am considering a vote for Mckinney or Nader as well.  But what possible meaning or effect could that have?

However, I am also thinking of voting for Obama with the idea that war on Iran is less likely, some kind of de-escalation or withdraw from Iraq is a little more likely, and a drift further rightward would at least slow down a little.

I\'ve been following your articles for a while now. I don\'t know if you would be willing, (or perhaps I have missed them), but writing a few pieces geared towards young Obama supporters, with a less aggressive tone, talking about how their hope should lie elsewhere (and why - critique of Obama, and talking about youth initatives going on that are more promising, more hopeful - PowerVote, IVAW, SDS, SEAC, USAS, etc...), would be really helpful for youth organizers such as myself. Crushing the hope of young people excited about Obama without providing the alternative venues to build popular power for change, so repeatedly on a forum such as ZNet hasn\'t had the desired effect in my experience... at least among my peers. Through the critique is definitely needed, it most often has a depoliticizing effect, instead of a radicalizing effect, without talk of the alternative.

Best, Brian Kelly

 Note to readers: Carl Davidson has deleted the original comment to which I responded below.  That in itself is very interesting.  It was a long comment in which which he (a) said my question to progressive Obama supporters (where do they draw the line?) was a "big ball of mush;" (b) admitted that his standard for supporting Obama was anything to the left of the rightist John McCain and (c) repeated his recurrent slanderous insinuation that I am calling Obama a fascist and a denier of the Nazi Holocaust....

Response to a Slanderous Obamanist

My trip to Obamanist Hell and back with Carl Davidson continues. And now there is the issue of his Holocaust slander, to which I turn at the end.

Carl,

So anything short of arch-plutocratic messianic militarist McCain will keep you on board and away from voting third party or not at all. 

Oh-kay.

Fine, but (a) you  continue to be over-obsessed with (and are becoming borderline slanderous about) the Holocaust denial comment (more on this below); (b) I did not say Obama was morally or ideologically worse than the fascist David Duke : I said Obama has actually voted funds for the invasion of Iraq, which has imposed a Holocaust on Iraq;  (c) Obama does mess with left minds a great deal (you are a perfect example and are being exposed as a fool by Obama) and while he would never call himself a socialist (of course) he does falsely claim to be a "progressive" and to be antiwar; (d) you should consider that much of Obama\'s pronounced elite sponsorship reflects the carefully vetted sense that he will help re-legitimize the very military U.S. Empire Project you abhor --- something he quite loudly and explicitly promises to do in his conservative  2006 book (which goes to great lengths to delete past U.S. imperial crimes), his  nauseating Foreign Affairs essay (summer 2007) and his various Reagan- and JFK-like foreign policy addresses to the Council of Foreign Relations, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the Wilson Center and in comments praising George Bush I\'s horrid imperial butchery in 1990-91; (e) you mention Iraq (where\'s he\'s actually very bad and quite deceptive - numerous Obama campaign materials here in Iowa told voters they could "join the movement to end the war" by caucusing for him...a completely  absurd claim) always but you leave out his terrible imperial positions on Israel/Palestine, Columbia, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iran, American foreign policy history, etc. and the world as a whole; (f) you naturally can\'t expect all progressive voters to go as far as you in accommodating his center and right corporate and imperial stances (and vapid non-stances) on a plethora of issues and matters (Iraq, Afghanistan, Latin America, nuclear power, campaign finance, corporate power, health care, civil liberties, trade, welfare "reform," class injustice and on and on and on and on...)...perhaps you have a super-normal capacity to accommodate bullshit in pursuit of "realistic" and "pragmatic"  objectives; (g) you should disconnect from Obama and the election somewhat and think or at least write more about the broader role and relevance of the quadrennial presidential spectacles in the crippling of democracy and indeed in the making of corporate-managed totalitarianism (please read Sheldon Wolin\'s book Democracy Incorporated after the election); (h) you should stop calling these sorts of reflections "subjectivism;" (i) you should consider the possibility that granting your vote and electoral labor power in advance to Obama (\'08) or Kerry (\'04) or Gore (\'00) or Clinton (1996,1992) or Dukakis (1988) etc. --- with no conditions other than that they aren\'t McCain or Bush II or Dole or Bush I etc. ----  may be part of the problem with these candidates; (j) you should re-define and expand or maybe just clarify your sense of "the prize" ( read Charles Derber\'s book Hidden Power on the dangers of the "Election Trap"?)  (k) you should take a close look at what the Conrgressional vote monitors mean when they designate "liberal" voting records (it may well be less than what you think); (l) you should recall that Obama has distanced himself from this voting record and indeed from the term liberal...

Now to your Holocaust slander - a nice bit of Chicago-style smearing. You are perhaps hung up on the Holocaust denial thing because you have bought into the narrow definition of the one and true Holocaust being the six million Jews under the Nazis. There was a Native American Holocaust, a black American Holocaust,...other examples.  Some of us honestly think the U.S. is imposing a Holocaust on Iraq: 1. 2 million dead, millions more injured and displaced. Further devastation of a society Superpower has been assaulting for a long time.

 "Antiwar" Obama (who will adjust his already weak start-to-remove-combat brigades in 16-month pledge in accord with the advice of commanders "on the ground") denies all this.  In fact, he says we\'ve got to stop spending so much money "putting Iraq back together."  Yes: "putting Iraq back together" How sickening is that, Carl?  If you can shake that sort of commentary off easily (there\'s more...much more) and just carry on for the Empire-legitimizer Barack and "the prize" of electing him (stopping McCain). ....well good for "objectivist" you.   

By the way, just half the U.S. force structure in Iraq is combat brigades and Obama will not sign on to banning Blackwater and the rest of the corporate private security contractors from Iraq (he can\'t back Jan Schakowsky\'s bill on that).  

Obama ridiculously claims that Bush-Cheney invaded with noble and democratic intentions ("to create a Jeffersonian democracy")  and refuses to acknowledge (just like the liberal hawks of the late 1960s on Vietnam) the criminal and imperial and racist nature of the one sided colonial "war."   That refusal is part of why he won\'t or can\'t meaningfull oppose the "war" (imperial occupation).  

So, really...cut the slanderous crap on the Holocaust.  You know very well I do not say that he denies the Jewish/Nazi Holocaust. You know I could give a lot of the details on how terribly close he is to Israel and the Israel lobby, after all.  You and many millions of other Americans should get it through your skull that we are doing a Holocaust in Iraq (a policy your hero has funded and rationalized and will sustain) and that Obama (hardly alone) denies this. And you know that I said all the top Democrats - including the one for whom I volunteered in the fall of 2007 --- had signed on to Empire\'s official denial of the Holocaust we are imposing on Iraq.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

That\'s a big mushball of a question.

Answer: When he becomes identical to John McCain, or worse, on the war in Iraq and the danger of future war with Iran.

That point hasn\'t been reached.  Not even close, at least to anyone not looking for an anti-imperialist candidate.

Does that mean Obama has my line on the war? Not at all, I\'m an \'Out Now!\' person. But part of my platform, and my internationalist obligations, is to end this horrible war in Iraq as rapidly as possible. So you have to make an assessment: which White House makes that task more realizable, one occupied by Obama or one occupied by McCain? We have chosen not to consider that question, and an answer to it, as a matter of indifference. I will defend my assessment of that \'difference that makes a difference\', without having to defend any particular point, or even most points, on the platform of Obama and the Democratic party.

I am part of the socialist left, and have my own platform, which is not Obama\'s, and neither of us ever made such a claim. He is not even a consistent progressive, a point we have made since the begining of this project, where we identified him as speaking from the center and subject to rightward drift in the general election.

That is now being played out, but it still doesn\'t change my orientation one bit: "Stop McCain, Stop the War, Vote Obama 2008.\'

Both the far left and the right, for their own reasons, are doing all they can to drive a wedge between progressive Obama voters and moderate-center Obama voters. But the fact is that it will take both blocs voting for Obama to defeat McCain, and we will work to maintain that necessity.

It\'s well known the Obama has some points of agreement with McCain, such as support for the death penalty. There are more. It\'s also well known that they have sharp differences, such as Roe v Wade and a woman\'s right to chose. There are others. After all, McCain is a Republican conservative and Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, which is notable, but from my socialist left perspective, still leaves a lot to be desired.

Keeping a scorecard of either serious matters or less serious \'gotcha\' points from statements by the two candidates is fine. But far more important is making an assessment of the deep divisions in our ruling class over Iraq, and Iran as well, how these forces have grouped themselves, and what conflicting outcomes they are working for in this election.

After that comes making an assessment of the forces in motion in this campaign, both the new progressive insurgencies and the retrograde trends of racial and religious bigotry. Then you decide who are your friends and who are your adversaries, and you deploy what limited forces you have to strike at the main danger while helping the more progressive forces, as best as you can, prepare for battles beyond the elections and in the streets and all the institutions of civil society.

I don\'t think it\'s too hard to figure this out at all, if you have a clear head, a clear idea of the main task today, and a clear idea of the main danger today. But if you don\'t, you get tangled up in absurdities, like claiming Barack Obama is a \'holocaust denier\' worse than David Duke, or \'JFK in Sepia,\' and other things I hope you\'ll come to regret at some point.

--Carl Davidson